Taking Sin, Giving Blood
by RedCurrant
Summary: A retelling of the Sleeping Beauty story, from the point of view of a sin-eater.


I swear: I had no idea who she was. I was just there to do my job! They gave me the money and pointed me toward the house and told me to do my job, to do what I would've done had any of you asked me yourselves. How was I supposed to know what she was? All that is villager's gossip, and you know I'm never in the village. You won't have me here, so how am I to know things like this? Please I--Can't I just explain myself?

I was in the back garden, collecting snow to melt for bath water when they came. Usually I get my water from the river, but it's always frozen this time of year. It's lengthy work getting enough for my purposes, so I didn't even notice that there was anyone else in the garden with me until I turned to bring the bucket inside and saw two---shadows, I thought they were, at first. After a moment, I realized they were men. They were standing near the gate, dressed in long, dirty cloaks. They looked nearly identical, with greasy hair and faces caked in dirt, but one had a long, pencil-thin scar down his cheek.

I asked them what they wanted, and the one with the scar asked if I was William, the sin-eater, and when I said I was, he said that he and his brother had come to procure my services for his daughter, who was only but a mile or two away. I told them I only worked for people in the village, but he said the next closest sin-eater was not less than a day's travel from here, and he feared his daughter would die before then. He pulled out a fistful of coins and begged, and I did not turn him away.

They led me through the woods, in the opposite direction of the village. We walked in silence and after some time of twisting through the trees we came upon a great manor covered in a thick, tangled mess of briar. The only break in the thorns was for a small, rounded door. The father, who said he could not bear to see his daughter in such a state, pressed the coins into my hands and pointed at the door.

The first thing I noticed was the utter cold. It was at least twenty degrees colder inside the manor than it had been outside. Once I began to rub my hands together, however, the stench of the place reached my nostrils. It smelled like animals had made the manor their graveyard. I brought my handkerchief to my nose, to try to filter out the smell (to no avail!) and began to walk further in, when I noticed the floor was covered in something dark and sticky. At first glance, I thought it might be blood, but the entire floor was carpeted in it, so I decided it must have been an accumulation of food or mud or something of the sort. I ignored it and walked to the room I had been directed to enter.

The door was open, and the room was as filthy as the entrance had been, but by the window was a respectably clean bed and upon it a girl so beautiful I forgot myself for a moment. She looked nothing at all like her father, but looked like she had been carved of ivory, her lips the color of a pink rose. Her long, golden hair spilled onto the pillows surrounding her head. After a minute, I saw the scraps of bread on her chest, and remembered what I had been sent in to do.

I sat at the edge of the bed and said a prayer, crossed-myself, and ate the bread crusts. As I said another prayer, I noticed her lips twitch just the slightest. She had been so still, I was not sure that I hadn't been too late, but I was certain they had twitched.

Lord forgive me, I don't know why I did it. I couldn't help myself. To be so hated and shunned in the village for the job you've given me, the job you all require of me, and then to be alone with such a beauty! I kissed her.

In an instant, she had bitten down on my lip with such force that her entire mouth must have filled with blood and the next thing I knew I had been pushed down to the floor and she was climbing out the window, not a single thorn of the briar scratching her ivory skin...

I didn't know. How could I have known? How can you blame me for the deaths of all those people when no one had told me what she was? I'm as innocent as the unborn babe, I swear it. I didn't know. Why do you approach me so? Don't you hear me at all? Don't any of you care for all the sins I've eaten for your loved ones? Please, I didn't know. How can you come at me with those weapons and those looks in your eyes...!


End file.
